Return of the Master
by the stargate time traveller
Summary: How stupid could her predecessor have been? If he could remember something as small as carrying a spare dematerialisation circuit, why else couldn't she remember other things, like developing a force field to protect herself from the blast of a laser screwdriver? But what about the Doctor leaving her behind? (Spoilers for Spyfall)


Disclaimer - I don't own Doctor Who, unfortunately, because if I did then there would be other Time Lords appearing in the show and there would be differences in the Doctor's personality. Still, at least I've got fanfiction, right?

Note - The reference to Parrak is the plot point of a Big Finish production in Ravenous 4 where the Master, desperate to survive after nearing the end of his life, tried to find the tomb of the Time Lord responsible for developing regeneration in the first place, but he ran afoul of the Eleven, a Time Lord renegade who could hear the other personas he'd had over the centuries. It's worth the listen to, but anything with Mark Bonnar is great.

* * *

Return of the Master.

Missy lay paralysed on the ground and she mentally laughed as she heard the lift taking her past self went down, taking her predecessor back down to his TARDIS with the new dematerialisation circuit with him so he could escape the black hole's pull. Missy still couldn't believe she had been so stupid back then to have tried to dematerialise so close to the event horizon, but then again that incarnation despite being brilliant had been short of a few gravitons short of a singularity. No black hole pun intended.

She also laughed at just how foolish her other self was. In fact, she had laughed, although he hadn't gotten the joke.

The timelines were not in sync. Her previous self would not remember the full story behind the regeneration which separated their two incarnations. Indeed, whenever Missy had thought about it, she had always found the memory as blurred as when she had been on Parrak searching for the Tomb of Artron before the twisted freak the Eleven, and how her memory had been fading even while she had tried so hard to find a way to keep going even if her days were numbered. She remembered the desperation she had felt then and had been mirrored in her actions when she had stolen all of the water on the planet to motivate the people into finding the Tomb.

Still, that didn't mean she didn't remember some bits, although not clearly enough to make sense of it all.

But now she knew the full story behind the regeneration into her current, and currently dying, self, Missy saw it made sense.

She had no clear memory of another version of herself killing each other, but she remembered the advice she'd paradoxically given herself to always keep a spare dematerialisation circuit on hand in case anything happened to the other; she was sure the Doctor hadn't bothered with the advice even after his exile to Earth centuries and lives ago. Stupid really, but since the Doctor didn't really bother with maintaining his own ship, she guessed it was expected.

But if she herself could remember such wonderful and simple advice to keep a dematerialisation circuit handy, then surely she would remember something else.

And she had.

Missy let a smirk twist her face as she let the regeneration energy seep through her system although it wasn't at the full level it needed to be to fully regenerate her yet. The forcefield generator she'd prepared a long time ago, and had saved her from that Cyberman years ago when she had tried to offer that army to the Doctor and had worked in tandem with that Vortex Manipulator on Skaro, had saved her life once more.

Her former self had foolishly discounted the possibility she would remember other details, like shooting someone with the laser screwdriver on full blast and missed the fact he would remember the spare circuit along the way.

If that would penetrate the memory, why couldn't other things?

She remembered the dimly remembered thought to devise a permanent forcefield to make sure it didn't kill her, although at the time it hadn't penetrated her brain that the version of her in question was her, the Master, or Missy, depending on how you looked at it from the perspectives of two different regenerations of the same Time Lord or Time Lady. She might not have remembered everything from her previous self's perspective, but she recalled more than enough to ensure she had a spare dematerialisation circuit but also a means of escape and she had devised a forcefield to prevent the blast of the laser screwdriver from killing her.

The Doctor had been right.

She could destroy planets, but she couldn't kill herself. None of her previous lives could, only in this case it was more literal.

The paralysis left Missy and she stood up slowly, feeling the tell-tale burn in her body. She closed her eyes and she pulled herself up using a sapling nearby. The forcefield had saved her from the worst of the blast, but it had damaged her body. Laser Screwdrivers were more powerful than some of the weapons it had been hit with, but it had served its purpose well. She had just stood up as well, only for a huge fireball to send her back to the ground.

When she awoke again - she wasn't sure how long and she didn't bother trying to work it out - Missy looked around and gaped at the devastation. Missy had caused and witnessed the destruction of worlds and armies in many forms before, but she hadn't expected this. The stench of burning filled her nostrils and she had to use her respiratory bypass system to full effect to get the stench out of her throat.

For the next few hours, she searched the floor.

Missy needed to find the Doctor.

Hopefully, they could both leave this ship and never come back, and if she had to spend the rest of her lives trying to make amends, then she would. She found saplings and burnt trees, patches of grass which had somehow survived the explosion, and she also found the remains of the Cybermen littering the ground, but she paid no attention to them. While she struggled with holding back the regeneration, she came across another Cyber suit; Missy had seen so many of them for the last few hours, so she almost avoided it. But as she looked down she saw that the suit looked…deflated. Curiously, as she had poked it, she had found the suit was empty. Missy had no idea how that had happened, but she quickly stopped caring because she had not found the Doctor.

At first, she had assumed he had survived and was looking for her in turn, but no matter what happened, no matter what she tried to do, she just could not find him.

When she had searched the entire floor, agonised since she was pushing her regeneration back, Missy had given up and she had gone to a lift and went back to the bridge. She hoped that he had gone back to his TARDIS and that he was waiting for her or he was too weak to take off.

While Missy had never needed to rely on the old Type 40 the Doctor preferred and had her own TARDIS, she hoped the old ship was there waiting for her and him to leave. She didn't know what had happened to Nardole or Bill, but she didn't care. All she knew was she needed to return to the Doctor, quickly.

While she had been holding back the regeneration, Missy had gone over to herself more than once the things she could say to him…

…Only to discover it was in vain. The Doctor's TARDIS was gone.

When she had realised he had left her there, Missy had almost collapsed before she had left in her own TARDIS. Missy had shrunken her time-ship down to a ring she permanently wore on her finger; it had amused her all the time she had been _trapped _in that vault in that Earth city the Doctor and his moronic friend had believed she was locked up when in fact she only needed to trigger the ring and she would step into her TARDIS and have adventures of her own although she'd needed to return. In any case, the Doctor's efforts to rehabilitate her had actually worked, to a point since Missy had begun to feel things she'd never felt before.

Besides, she wanted to be with her oldest best friend.

And now he had left her.

Missy had staggered into her TARDIS and left the Mondasian Colony Ship and had set the controls to take her to Earth. By that point Missy had been in so much pain it had been virtually impossible for her to really set the time she wanted to reach.

It would be a while before Missy, or rather the incarnation she would regenerate into worked out why, but when they did they would remember a story the Doctor had told them in the years they'd been imprisoned in the Vault.

The Doctor had told Missy about his encounter and near-miss with the entity known as House, a being who apparently had lived inside a bubble universe and had consumed the artron energy from TARDISes, and had killed dozens if not hundreds of Time Lords, including the Corsair. Missy had learnt the Doctor had met his TARDIS matrix which had been shoved into a flesh body, and the matrix had told him she had always taken him to where he was needed. Missy had been fascinated by the story. But before that happened she wondered why, as soon as she staggered out in pain, feeling the chameleonic shielding of her ship tingling in the tips of her fingers, she found herself close to the MI6 building on the Thames.

She stood watching it for a moment, her befuddled and pain riddled mind wondering why in the name of Omega she was here in the first place, but the pain of her upcoming regeneration made her groan and stagger.

"Are you okay?"

Missy swung around and gasped in pain. A man of Indian descent wearing a smart suit was standing there, looking at her in concern.

"No, I'm not," Missy gasped.

"I can take you to hospital," the man offered.

"No, there's nothing they can do for me," Missy wheezed, remembering from her studies of what had happened to the Doctor in the last days of his seventh life. The fact she had pushed him into that mess meant nothing to her. "But thanks. Ooh!"

She had lurched forward into his arms.

"Easy there, I'm going to call an ambulance-!" the man said, but Missy was looking deeply into his eyes.

"That won't be necessary," she said, smirking as she telepathically looked through the man's mind. As she looked into the man's man, Missy saw the wondrous possibilities open to her.

Or rather, her successor. Yes, she knew what her successor would look like now... This unknowing man who had no idea he would die, and she would take his identity. It was like encountering a future incarnation, or a Watcher.

The human looked at her in confusion - oh, nothing changed - as he held her. "What do you-?" he suddenly gave a gasping scream as Missy jabbed the Tissue Compression Eliminator into his chest and triggered it, although she had to pull away so she wasn't caught herself in the same dimensional field which crushed him to the size of a matchstick.

Staggering back to her TARDIS, regeneration energy flaring through her hands, Missy looked down at the body of the man, already mentally picturing what she wanted her new body to appear as while she filed away everything she had seen in his mind to mirror his personality down to the minutest detail.

But as she looked down at the shrunken and crushed body, Missy could not help herself. She bent down and picked up the little body and unlocked the TARDIS. She was sure there was something in the TARDIS she had available to keep it in, after all, didn't the women in Devon or Cornwall, somewhere in this tedious and insane little country, who believed in witchcraft carry effigies wrapped in cloth?

Missy staggered into the TARDIS and she quickly took off. At the controls, Missy was delighted as she had a clear head again, directed her TARDIS to one of the many buildings in London where she could regenerate in the open space without damaging her ship. As soon as she was positive the TARDIS had landed where she wanted it to be, Missy opened the doors and pressed the control which would ensure the time machine would remain open, she staggered out and held her hands out while she remembered this life.

Aside from a few mistakes here and there, Missy felt this had been one of the freest lives she'd had. Yes, she had made the mistake of trusting the Doctor too often, but now, ironically, with her regeneration imminent, she felt her old hatred of him which had been high in some of her previous lives.

But in this incarnation, Missy had to accept she had made the mistake of trusting the Doctor a little too much.

"Doctor," Missy hissed as she let the energy seep through her hands. "I swear I will never ever trust you again. I will make you pay for abandoning me."

And then she let go.

XXX

Years Later.

As he sat down in front of his house, which was, in fact, his TARDIS in stealth mode, waiting for the Doctor herself to arrive the Master or Agent O was sitting with the Australian secret service agents sent to protect him and the Doctor's party from harm he was trying hard to hide his amusement at the ironic twist of the statement.

He felt as though he had achieved dominion over this miserable planet and the entire universe already, and these two humans were press-ganged into acting as his bodyguards.

It hadn't happened yet, but still, he had to admit it was still amusing.

When he heard the familiar sound of the Doctor's old relic landing, the Master had a moment to think. In the years since his regeneration and entering MI6 - how the people on this planet dealt with such a pathetic intelligence system bewildered him although he had gained the skillset and the knowledge needed to begin putting his plans into motion, the Master had been very busy and he had been very patient. He had the time. Alright, so he had wanted to kill C and some of those other fools and unleash the power of the Kasaavin for a long time, but he had kept his nerve. He had even fooled the Doctor, which had been a great victory in itself.

The Master smiled, thinking about how well his plan was unfolding; while his alliance with Daniel Barton was brief although the Master needed his resources until he was ready to take over himself, everything was going as he'd planned. And soon he would finally deal with the Doctor.

Nothing else mattered.

Soon the Doctor would acknowledge him finally as the Master.


End file.
